Librarians have long struggled to combat some of the negative
stereotypes about their image and profession, but to do so effectively
it’s necessary to look at these perceptions in a historical context.

Rally.org - payment processing site, like indiegogo or kickstarter but a much lower rate.

EveryLibrary - superPAC for libraries - huge movement for libraries. Assns can get items to the ballot but cannot do anything more - this can do campaigning, marketing, etc on behalf of libraries across the nation

What a fantastic presentation - of a fantastic project! The folks at the UCSC libraries got a 2-year IMLS grant to set up the Grateful Dead Online Archive. They used the archive materials they had at hand already, then opened it up to community input. They were sent posters, tickets, envelopes that had been drawn on, Tshirts, all kinds of material related to the Dead, and the library team set up collection development processes, taxonomies, copyright management, and everything else that goes into an online archive. Impressive!!!

I didn't take notes during this session, as I was late to it after the Drupal Dine-around and ended up just listening to and enjoying the panel discussion. Who do you want to be? What do you want to be? Where do you want to be? Great input from all the panelists, and the Twitter conversation going on around it was fantastic!

Definitely check out memcache - keeps all the same things I local cache versus a new call to the server each time. Also boost module, which caches the entire page on the server side - they found it sped up their Drupal delivery noticeably.

Can limit Google image search by size or by usage rights (CC) - can also search ON an image! Either upload or by URL, via Google image search, to find other locations with that image. Can be used to identify!

Google Advanced Search is very useful, but also hard to find. If you see a gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen, you can click on that to find the "Advanced Search" option. But the gear isn't always there, so bookmark the following websites:

Google - their algorithms change based on more than just terms - speed of typing, length of time on page, order of words, all of that! I had no idea. Try each search x3 and reorder words for different search results.

Use ~word for more synonyms, use Verbatim filter to avoid all synonyms

Can block certain domains if logged into chrome - like ehow.com and about.com! Check into this.... Google.com/reviews/t for manually blocking in other browsers

Now that two weeks have passed, which is about a week and a half longer than I planned on, I need to get my thoughts and notes down about this year's Internet Librarian conference. As always, Jane and the ITI folks did a smashing job!

These may not be much use to someone who wasn't there; they're more my notes to myself about things to remember, things to check out, and other "stuff like that". If you do find it useful, fantastic!

Digitization is networked - so much more than just taking a digital picture of the text

Library as platform- unifying framework- take social networking seriously

Knowledge networking: We've accepted the inherent limitations of the form of knowledge (books) - we have to filter the medium, and that has shaped the nature of knowledge itself

Knowledge is that which has settled. It's also a series of stops. Ask a questions, get an answer, move on.

Knowledge now lives in the networks - not the nodes, but the network itself.

We are no longer locked into the rectangle of knowledge dissemination - book, newspaper - we now can get all kinds of info from far outside that box.

Peer review isn't scalable

The net exposes a long hidden truth: we don't agree about anything.

One other limitation: knowledge until now has been within a single classification. No longer!

We are getting better at disagreeing about things.

Software developers now live in the fastest most efficient and effective learning environment ever- humility and generosity. Admit they can't do it, toss it out for others to see, copy, and use.
- The power of iteration. Public learning.

November 2, 2012

"It’s time for the old adage that women neither like nor do well in math and science be put to rest …"

Amen to that! The folks at MBA-Online have put together another great infographic showing how this is changing, the impact it's having both in the workplace and in our wallets, and a few facts I didn't realize - like how the wage gap is 7% narrower for women in STEM fields.

As a woman in a STEM field - that of astronomical construction - I am heartened every day when I look around at our optical engineer (a woman), our enclosure engineer (a woman), or our thermal engineer (another woman), or talk with the mail system administrator (yep, you guessed it), or interact with any of the solar astrophysicists I talk to weekly (you got it). I feel very, very lucky to work in a project that has pretty much thrown the "typical" attitude out the window.

I can also see the significant change in organizational approach when I walk down the hallways of our sister organization, and compare the astronomers who've joined us in the last 10 years with the tenured astronomer batch - there are distinct gender and racial gaps. I'm so happy to see that change happening!